Warped Tour brings punk and skateboarding culture to Camden

CAMDEN — Discarded beer cups thrown across the lawn, cigarette smoke and hairspray lingering in the air, and a mother with a baby stroller donning a tanktop and jean shorts ready to head-bang to bands that only have thirty minutes to prove themselves.

These, alongside many other oddities like twelve-year-olds with pink hair walking as if they’re the norm, make up the sights of Warped Tour.

Warped Tour can loosely be defined as a touring music festival with an added focus on extreme sports. Ever since its inception in 1995, it has been sponsored by Vans Skateboarding Company.

While the early years focused more on the punk scene that followed bands like Bad Religion, Blink-182 and NOFX, the tour has broadened its horizons to take in new genres.

With that broadening came a broadening of culture, with the skater punks now blending into goths and “hipsters.” Over its 17-year-span, the festival has become the place for anyone from pre-teens to seasoned punks to come throw their elbows around for 30-minute sets without any cops or parents around to tell them to put out their cigarettes.

It’s become a weird dichotomy of culture, almost existing outside of its original purpose and becoming a Coachella-lite that focuses on punk instead of an 80s nu-wave revival.

Enter Steve Rauscher, also known as “White Jesus,” “as some people like to call me.” Rauscher is a long-time Warped Tour attendee and Camden County resident who has gone to the Susquehanna Bank Center to see the festival “since they built the &*%#$@^*!^$#& place.”

Rauscher out-ages the majority of the crowd by several decades and has the personality to boot.

“It’s Warped Tour. What do you expect?” asked Rauscher about the crowd.

He claims to have two names on two different driver’s licenses and was hesitant to reveal his real name for “legal reasons.”

But he has no problem showing up to any festival, naming Ozzfest and Godsmack tours among many others that he frequents. He still gets into the crowds for bands like Taking Back Sunday and Blessed the Fall to mosh with fellow fans, and he had already moshed “three or four times” by the time he stopped for a beer. Although he’s quick to point out that he does try to avoid mixing it up too much with those who could be much younger than him.

“I’m not a storm trooper. I don’t do it that frequently,” said Rauscher about his moshing habits.

At one point, he decided that he was going to get into one of the pits to smoke a joint of marijuana. While elbowing through the crowd to get a spot, he was finally ready to light up as one more person was in his way.

“So, I pushed this little girl out of the way and when I turned around, I saw that it was my 19-year-old daughter,” said Rauscher, who then went on to explain that his daughter is well aware of his cannabis smoking habits.

But among a group of teenagers that tend to make it more of a social event, Rauscher is here for his bands and not much else.

“I came here to see what I want to see,” said Rauscher. “I like the festivals. I love live music.”

On the other side of the spectrum are the vendors and sponsors. While many sit under tents selling band merchandise, energy drinks and skateboarding accessories, a few manage to make their case even without the extreme sports or hardcore punk tie-in.

Farm Animal Rights Movement, or F.A.R.M., is a non-profit organization that promotes a vegan lifestyle and lobbies for the fair treatment of animals. They now tour with Warped Tour across the entire country and they actually pay one dollar to anyone willing to watch a four-minute video detailing the gory process by which animals are killed.

Against the imagery of teenagers and adults in combat boots throwing their weight around inside of a mosh pit as a lead singer throats out animalistic growls to a cheering audience, it does tend to seem a bit out of place.

But according to Jeni Haines, the tour manager for F.A.R.M., the crowd that the tour brings out is ultimately accepting of their message. And while the split tends to be “about 50-50” when it comes to how many people were serious about changing their lifestyle and those who just want money for the vending machine, she finds the crowds that come to the tour to be some of the best she’s seen.

“It’s really exciting. It’s always something new on the Warped Tour,” said Haines. “It brings out thousands and thousands of kids who are just open-minded.”